The main aim of this blog is to interpret the Christian Order in the light of current affairs, philosophy, literature and the arts -- and vice versa. So it's about ideas. Social, political and religious comment. Links, notes on people, places, events, books, movies etc.
And mainly a place where I can post half-baked ideas in the hope that other people, or the passing of time, will help me to bake them.

13 June 2012

In the civil war going on in Syria, the Western media have appointed the rebels against the Assad regime as the good guys, and woe to those who disagree with their judgement. Among those who disagree are probably most of the Christians in Syria, who fear what will happen to them if the rebels take over.

The appointment of the good guys by the western media is not merely a wrong opinion, they seem to have got the facts wrong as well. Western intervention in Libya's civil war last year did not bring good results, and the same thing seems to be happening in Syria as well.

If you were paying attention you would not be surprised about these "attacks on the people of Tawargha [that] are so severe that the United Nations has labeled them 'war crimes'" — After Libya's War, Acts Of Vengeance.

Now, if the official "bad guys" had been accused of this, this "one more fact about the town that was destroyed" would not have been buried at the end of the article: "In this overwhelmingly Arab nation, most of Tawargha's population was black." No, if the actors were reversed, that bit would be front and center, and the phrase "ethnic cleansing" would have rightly been used in the headline.

Not that the Assad regime are the good guys. But while it is desirable to get rid of a bad government, it is better to replace it with something better rather than something worse.

It is clear by now that Russia’s government has dug in against outside intervention in Syria, its longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East. Less well known is the position taken by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fears that Christian minorities, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring.

In his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”

The western media have criticised the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church for their non-interventionist approach, and accuse them of sitting idly by and failing to act to "stop the killing". But the question is, who is doing the killing?

In Syria, as in Libya, the killing has been, and is being done by both sides. What is needed is not military intervention, but peacemaking intervention.

Orthodox Christian mission and missiology

New Religious Movements

New Religious Movements are those that have arisen within the last 200 years, and inclde movements within established religions as well as those that have become separate religions. Please note that this is not a forum for polemics for or against any religious groups.